A camshaft of this type is used in a cylinder head of an internal combustion engine. Each valve—inlet and outlet valve—for bringing about the gas exchange is assigned a cam pack which has a plurality of, for example two or three, cams with different cam profiles. The cam profiles have the same base circle radius, the cams being of different configuration in each case for different operating modes, such as a firing mode and an engine braking mode, and a low rotational speed range and a high rotational speed range. Depending on the operating mode, a cam of the cam pack is brought into operative connection with the gas exchange valve which is assigned to said cam pack, by displacement of the sliding piece.
A camshaft of the type mentioned in the introduction is known from DE 10 2008 005 639 A1, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. A camshaft having two sliding pieces which can be displaced in its basic camshaft is described there. Each of the sliding pieces has a plurality of cam packs, each cam pack having two cams with different cam profiles. An actuating device serves to displace the sliding pieces from a first switching position into a second switching position or vice versa. The displacement in the axial direction of the sliding pieces is defined by a switching path of a switch guide plate having two slotted-guide tracks. The switching path corresponds to the mean spacing of the two cams of a cam pair. The actuating device has two actuating pins which can engage into the slotted-guide tracks of the switch guide plate, as a result of which the sliding pieces are displaced axially by means of the rotation of the basic camshaft. Starting from the first switching position, first of all one sliding piece is displaced into the second switching position. After displacement of this sliding piece, the other sliding piece is displaced from the first into the second switching position. In this guide plate, the switch guide plate is arranged next to the sliding piece, in relation to the axial extent of the camshaft. The camshaft therefore has a relatively great axial length.